Crocus Thoughts

Snow fell in the village in the wee hours of yesterday morning, not unexpected at this time of the year. One can reasonably expect the long white season to lurk in the shadows and make surprise appearances until late April, sometimes well into May. I remember a not so long ago year when snow and a killing frost wiped out our newborn veggie patch on the first day of June, and we had to start over. 

When winter finally retreats, the woods green up rapidly, and within a short time the whole forest is carpeted in bloodroot, trilliums, trout lilies, tiny hepatica and violets. No quiet and subtle entrance here for Lady Spring, but a loud, triumphant fanfare and running footsteps, an explosion of shaggy green leafage, a riotous profusion of blooms bursting forth, almost within minutes.

Last night in my sleep I wandered along in a cloud of wildflowers and lacy green ferns, listened to a throng of  grosbeaks singing in the overstory, watched an osprey hunting over the Clyde river. (sigh) early days yet. Dreams will have to sustain me for another several weeks—at present the woods are a realm of deep snow and inky blue shadows, and so they will remain for quite a while.

There are seed catalogues all over the house, and I dream of putting my hands in the good dark earth of the garden again, but the place is still three (four in places) feet deep in snow. For now, potted tulips and crocus thoughts will have to do.

Sequestered, Week 255 (CCLV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I breathe in the soft, saturated exhalations of cedar trees and salmonberry bushes, fireweed and wood fern, marsh hawks and meadow voles, marten and harbor seal and blacktail deer. I breathe in the same particles of air that made songs in the throats of hermit thrushes and gave voices to humpback whales, the same particles of air that lifted the wings of bald eagles and buzzed in the flight of hummingbirds, the same particles of air that rushed over the sea in storms, whirled in high mountain snows, whistled across the poles, and whispered through lush equatorial gardens…air that has passed continually through life on earth. I breathe it in, pass it on, share it in equal measure with billions of other living things, endlessly, infinitely.

Richard Nelson, The Island Within

Thursday Poem - Summons

(for International Women's Day)

Last night I dreamed

ten thousand grandmothers
from the twelve hundred corners of the earth
walked out into the gap
one breath deep
between the bullet and the flesh
between the bomb and the family.

They told me we cannot wait for governments.

There are no peacekeepers boarding planes.

There are no leaders who dare to say

every life is precious, so it will have to be us.

They said we will cup our hands around each heart.

We will sing the earth’s song, the song of water,

a song so beautiful that vengeance will turn to weeping.

The mourners will embrace, and grief replace

every impulse toward harm.

Ten thousand is not enough, they said,

so, we have sent this dream, like a flock of doves

into the sleep of the world. Wake up. Put on your shoes.

You who are reading this, I am bringing bandages

and a bag of scented guavas from my trees. I think

I remember the tune. Meet me at the corner.

Let’s go.

Aurora Levin Morales 

 

When Winter Returns

Order a beaker of something ambrosial at your local coffee shop. Sip it slowly. 

Pretend the weather is balmy and the trees have leafed out, that the overstory is lavishly tenanted by songbirds. 

Think about gardening. Imagine roses and herbs in bloom, veggies coming up, the bee garden filled with little sisters going about their work.

Remember sunlight and warmth. Breathe deeply. Cradle the light within.

Friday Ramble - Getting Through March, Sheepishly

March came in like a lioness, and then the lioness stepped away for a few days. In her absence, plucky birds paired off amorously, and village starlings sang merrily, pretending they were robins and enjoying the pretense. It rained, and for a day or two, there was the possibility of a maple syrup run. Thoughts of springtime danced in my sconce, and there were gardening magazines, agricultural annuals, nursery catalogs and seed packets on every surface in the house.

Alas, the halcyon days were brief. Winter made a gleeful return late yesterday, the north wind howling in the rafters and tossing heaps of snow against the doors of the garden shed. There were clouds of blowing snow, and clumps, tumps and desiccated grasses vanished after their fleeting emergence out of the white stuff. Snowdrifts took a deep sigh of relief and stopped melting. Overnight, the village became a sea of ice, and walking this morning is worrisome, downright treacherous.

In other years, migratory birds had returned by now, but Canada geese, ducks, herons and loons will be late coming home this year because there is no open water anywhere and nothing for them to eat. On walks, we listen for them anyway.

What is one to do at such times? I drink copious amounts of espresso and tea. I spend a lot of time reading and scribbling. In the wee hours, I plot new bee gardens and beds of roses, research heirloom vegetables, lay out the design for another quilt. I cultivate forbearance and don't look out the window when snow falls again, hoping ardently that Lady March will get her act together and morph into a lamb, darn it.

At the end of winter, one becomes a tad maudlin. When a friend in the Lanark Highlands told me a few days ago that lambs are now being born in her magnificent old log barn, I was sad. I felt sorry for the poor wee beasties who were coming into the world in such bleak circumstances. What a harrowing start to life.

Enough is enough. Rain would be just fine, and it is certainly easier to shovel than snow. There is one thing about the weather though - night skies are fabulous when they are clear. There are flaming sunsets and moons one can almost reach up and touch, planets dancing in the sky at dusk, dippers of starlight strewn by handfuls from vast, streaming cosmic cauldrons. Simply magnificent.

While I was outside this morning shoveling the veranda, a friend walked by with her Labrador (Sunny) and stopped to talk for a few minutes. We had not seen much of each other in recent weeks, and it was pleasant to stand there (shuffling from foot to foot in the cold) and catch up. I think I can hang in for a while longer.

Thursday Poem - You Can't Be Too Careful

Spring storm and hail of ice cubes
pummels my town and no other.
There was a time when townspeople
would call this fall the wrath of God
or work of witches. A lower profile
may have saved some crones
renowned for bitter herbs, odd dames
you went to in the woods for troubles.
But some would go on being busybodies
and scolds dragged out, dunked, drowned
or hung like limp, forgotten fruit
from gallows trees. Scarecrows and
cautionary tales. And truly the crows
flee from our town screaming
blue murder, scarier than a siren.
Even in these enlightened times,
some of us still go warily,
keeping secret our wild simples,
asking nothing for our quirky blessings.

Dolores Stewart Riccio
(from The Nature of Things)

Wordless Wednesday - Reflection

Birch Mother in the Wind

Paper birch (Betula papyrifera)

also called White birch or Canoe birch

Here we are on the cusp between winter and springtime, weary of ice and snowdrifts, craving light and warmth. There is still a lot of snow about, and the weather is cold, icy winds scouring the bare trees and making the branches ring like old iron bells. Perhaps that is to be expected, for springtime is a puckish wight this far north. After making a brief appearance, she often disappears for several weeks and doesn't show up again until the end of March or the beginning of April.

For all that, March days have a wonderful way of quieting one's thoughts and breathing rhythms, bringing her back to a still and reflective space in the heart of the living world. The Old Wild Mother (Earth) is haggard and tattered, but she takes us in and holds us close. She shelters us and soothes us. She comforts us. 

I sat on a log in the woods a few days ago, watching as scraps of birch bark fluttered back and forth in the north wind. When my breath slowed and my mind became still, the lines etched in the tree's paper were words written in a language I could almost understand. When the morning sun slipped out from behind the clouds, rays of sunlight passed through the blowing endments and turned them golden and translucent, for all the world like elemental stained glass.

When I touched the old tree in greeting, my fingers came away with a dry springtime sweetness on them that lingered for hours. I tucked a thin folio of bark in the pocket of my parka and inhaled its wild fragrance all the way home.

Sequestered, Week 254 (CCLIV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring. A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges. A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

It is very cold here this morning, so there will be no open water for a few weeks and no returning Canada geese, but I have been hearing them in my dreams.

Rumors of Spring

Happy March!

For a few days this week, weather in the village was mild, and the towering snowdrifts everywhere subsided a bit. Birds sang lightheartedly in the park, and maples in the garden sprouted tiny red buds. For a while we dared to entertain the fragile hope that springtime was on its way and warmer times were not far off.

Alas, March roared in like a lion. Several inches of snow fell overnight, and we are back to heaving white stuff out of our way. I have already shoveled the deck, the stairs and a track around the garden for Beau, and I will tackle the front walk and driveway after my fingers have warmed up. First, a fine cup of hot, black coffee.

Weather Canada says the snow will stop in an hour or so, but I am not holding my breath. There are snow clouds up there from one side of the sky to the other, and a nasty north wind is rampaging through the village. When the sun rises tomorrow morning, the temperature will be in the minus thirties (Celsius) with windchill factored into the equation. Old Man Winter is not done with us yet. Harumph.

Friday Ramble - How Sweet It Is

It remains one of my favorite intervals in the whole turning year - the cold sunny days in late winter or early springtime when the north gears up for the maple syrup season. At this time of the year, the Lanark woods are filled with sugar bird (saw-whet owl) songs - it is nesting season and the tiny fierce owl (the male) sings to attract a mate. Legend has it that the saw-whet sings when the maple sap is running, and that the sap stops running when thunder is heard for the first time.

Clouds of smoke and steam rise from wooden sugar shacks tucked in among the old trees, and the ambrosial fragrance of boiling maple sap is everywhere. The sylvan alchemy in progress is wild and sweet, and the homely metaphor of the syrup cauldron or pot has profound resonance for me. I still have the battered Dutch oven I carried as I rambled the continent many years ago, stirring soups, potions and stews by starlight and watching as sparks went spiraling into the inky sky over the rim of my old pot. The motes of light rising from its depths were stars too, perfect counterpoint to the constellations dancing over my head.

These days, there's the stockpot bubbling away on my stove, a rice cooker, a bean crock and an unglazed earthenware tagine, cast iron cooking pots by Staub and Le Creuset in bright red, a small three-legged iron incense bowl on the table in my study. In late February, early March and April, there are the sugar camps of friends in the Lanark Highlands. Miles of collecting hose in confetti colors are strung from maple to maple, and evaporators send fragrant plumes into the air. Tin sap pails and spouts are fixed to trees, and antique syrup cauldrons boil over open fires to demonstrate how maple syrup was made in times past.

The word cauldron comes from the Middle English cauderon, thence from the Anglo-Norman caudiere and the Latin caldāria, the latter meaning “cooking pot” and rooted in the adjective calidus meaning warm or “suitable for warming”. At the end of the trail is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root kelə meaning simply “warm”. Calendar, calorie, chafe, chiaroscuro, claim, clamor, class, clear, council, hale, haul and lee are kin. So is caldera, the term geologists use to describe the massive crater formed when a volcano's magma chamber is emptied by a massive eruption or the chamber's roof collapses. The largest volcanic caldera on earth is the vast Yellowstone Caldera in northern Wyoming which is actually composed of four overlapping basins.

The night that gifts us with stars and enfolds us gently when the sun goes down is a vast cauldron or bowl. Somewhere up there in the darkness, Cerridwen is stirring a heady cosmic brew of knowledge, creativity and rebirth, her magical kettle simmering over a mystic cookfire. From her vessel, the bard Taliesin once partook of a single drop and awakened into wisdom and song. We're all vessels, and one of the best motifs for this old life is surely a pot or cauldron, one battered, dented and well traveled, but useful and happy to be of service, bubbling and crackling away in the background, making happy musics and occasionally sending bright motes up into the air.

And so it is with this old hen when her favorite wild places begin to awaken in early spring. Notions of alchemy bubble away gently in her sconce. Sparks fly upward, images of pots and cauldrons cosmic and domestic whirl about in her thoughts. She simply could not (and would not) be anywhere else, and she would not mind coming back as an owl in the Lanark woods in her next life.

Northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus)

Thursday Poem - For the Children

The rising hills,
the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
The steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together,

learn the flowers,

go light.

Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island

Wordless Wednesday - Evergreen

Cakes for the Journey

I awakened before dawn this morning and stood outside in the darkness, waiting for a fragile scrap of waning moon to show her face above the horizon in the southern sky. She was visible for only a minute or two before fading away in a graceful gesture of kinship with the rising sun, but the slender crescent of light remained on the inside of my eyelids long after retreating into the high still light of morning.

A single male cardinal perched in a maple tree in the garden singing blithely, and he didn't seem to care that it is only late February and there is a lot of snow about. On our early walk, two owls were perched in an old beech tree in the park, a splendid pair of mated "great hornies" greeting the day with gentle nudgings and hootings.There was no mistaking their pleasure in being together and sharing a tree for a few minutes, but that is probably the only quiet time they will enjoy today. There is a brood of little owlets in another tree down the hill, and the parents are run off their feet (or rather their wings) finding food for their hungry offspring.

 

Returning home, I made a robust beaker of French roast with freshly ground beans before ransacking the freezer for blueberries, then the refrigerator for organic flour and maple syrup from the highlands, a fine rosy beginning for a late winter day. The moon is new tomorrow, and the approaching lunar cycle (and hopefully the arrival of spring) calls for a celebratory gesture of some kind, a little culinary magic. Fresh "made from scratch" journey cakes (or pancakes or bannock) seemed like the right way to go, and the fragrance in the kitchen as they cooked was downright ambrosial.

Sequestered, Week 253 (CCLIII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I build a platform, and live upon it, and think my thoughts, and aim high. To rise, I must have a field to rise from. To deepen, I must have bedrock from which to descend. The constancy of the physical world, under its green and blue dyes, draws me toward a better, richer self, call it elevation (there is hardly an adequate word), where I might ascend a little -- where a gloss of spirit would mirror itself in worldly action. I don't mean just mild goodness. I mean feistiness too, the fires of human energy stoked; I mean a gladness vivacious enough to disarrange the sorrows of the world into something better.

It is one of the great perils of our so-called civilized age that we do not acknowledge enough, or cherish enough, this connection between soul and landscape—between our own best possibilities, and the view from our own windows. We need the world as much as it needs us, and we need it in privacy, intimacy, and surety.

Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings

On the Edge of the Snowy Woods

Friday Ramble - For the Birds

Alas, much of the last week has been spent clearing white stuff from around the little blue house in the village. At times, the threshold, cobblestones, driveway, sundeck and steps disappeared from view completely, and getting out and about to do anything at all was quite an exercise.

In winter, I shovel a trail around the garden for Beau, but recent snowfalls have filled it in over and over again. Although his circuit has been dredged out several times in recent days, it is three feet deep in snow at the moment, and Himself is up to his houndy ears in white stuff when he goes out. He is not amused.  Clearing a path for him is slow going and more akin to tunneling than it is to shoveling, but we keep at it. One of these days he will be able to zoom around the yard again.

After waiting out high winds and heavy snowfall in the cedar hedge, village birds are hungry, and first thing in the morning, the garden is filled with clamorous fluttery folk waiting for their breakfast. Before anything else is done, bird feeders are cleaned and refilled, and seed is scattered on the deck for ground noshers. There have been many mornings recently when just getting to the feeders was a chore.

Cardinals, blue jays, nuthatches, various woodpeckers and winter finches (pine siskins, purple finches, redpolls, crossbills) visit from time to time, but sparrows, chickadees, and juncos are always about. How can one not feel affection for the tiny feathered spirits who visit every day and chirrup their thanks when food is put out for them, even in the most inclement weather? I always hope that grosbeaks (evening, pine and rose-breasted) will turn up, but they prefer rural and suburban areas and only visit village feeders in the depths of winter when they are desperate.

Winter birds are always welcome visitors. I once wrote here about an icy morning when a sparrow flew into the house, made himself comfortable in the sunlit dining room for a few minutes and sang joyously, then flew back out into the garden when he had warmed up a bit and had something to eat. Sparrows are as numerous here in winter as they are in most urban areas, but it is always a pleasure to spend time with the little passerines when other bird kin have migrated to warmer climes.

Depths is an appropriate word in these circumstances. We are almost drowning in snow, and village plows are fast running out of places to put it.

Thursday Poem - Mind wanting More

Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and there.
Birds reluctant to fly.

The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.

But the mind always
wants more than it has—
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses—as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.

Holly Hughes
from American Zen: A Gathering of Poets

Wordless Wednesday - Archipelago of Light

Espresso, Puddles and Light

Temperatures were well below zero overnight, and the village was a noisy place. From my pillow, I could hear the north wind roistering across the roof shingles and through the eaves. It wailed down the chimney, rattled doors and windows, sang through the telephone wires, howled its pleasure in the fine performance it was putting on. In the garden, it whistled through the old board fence, and there was the susurrus of nearby evergreens swaying in unison and talking among themselves. No doubt about it, winter plans to hang about for some time to come.

On an arctic morning in late winter, one is grateful for small things. A square of blue sky can be seen seen through the window when the clouds roll back away for a while, and the deep snow in the garden sparkles wherever sunlight touches it. In the kitchen, there is the aroma of freshly ground coffee beans and toasting sourdough, the cheerful sputtering of the De'Longhi coffee machine in the corner, the warmth of the coffee mug cradled in my gnarly paws. Beau leans sleepily against me with his eyes closed, happy ears and a contented expression. 

Strange as it may seem, even the deep blue snow beyond the windows merits a little attention and gratitude, such graceful curls and waves and billows, so many shades from pastel to indigo, such eye grabbing sculptured shadows. Trudging through icy cold and snowy February, one drinks in colour wherever she finds it.

On our morning walk, Beau and I paused in a pool of sunlight to watch the sun nibble delicately at the edges of a frozen puddle. As cold as the morning was, a little melting was going on, and the evolving concavity was a work of art in progress. 

Sequestered, Week 252 (CCLII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world... but that is where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible. Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order.

Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Bunch of Gladness

It is -22 Celsius here this morning including the wind chill, and a little blazing colour seems like a good way to start the day, along with a beaker of espresso and a good book, thermal underpinnings, woolly socks and my favorite shawl. Beau is not impressed and is snoring gently on the sofa with his blankie.

It will be much colder tonight, and a severe weather warning has been issued by Environment and Climate Change Canada. Another whopper of a storm will begin some time this evening and continue until early Monday with at least 16 inches of heavy snow, high winds (up to 48 mph.) and no visibility to speak of. Hydro has advised that there will be downed trees and power outages. Here we go again.

There is no point in starting to dig ourselves out again until the storm has passed, and our snow blowers and shovels are ready to go. We will all be outside together on Monday morning, enthusiastically flinging snow about and keeping a watchful eye on each other for signs of fatigue and physical distress.

This will be the second big "snowing and blowing" in four days. Where on earth are we going to put the white stuff this time? Snow banks here are already almost Himalayan in height, and throwing anything up on them is going to be a challenge.

Valentine's Day

trust your heart 

if the seas catch fire

(and live by love

though the stars walk backward)

e.e. cummings

My soulmate and I usually didn't do anything lavish or opulent for Valentine's Day, and that was just fine with us. I made a card for him with one of my photos or graphic designs, and as awful as some of my efforts were, he cherished them—after he passed away, I discovered he had saved them all, every single one. I saved the valentines he gave me too, and the last one is still on my bureau.

A special pot of tea was brewed, tiny cookies were made in heart shapes, and a token was sometimes carved into a piece of fruit: a smile, a kiss, a heart, a dove, a lover's knot. We shared a single piece of decadent dark chocolate (Hummingbird, Purdy, Meybol or Vigdis Rosenkilde) and went for a long walk in the woods with our canine companions, first Cassie, then Spencer, then (and still with me) sweet Beau.

There were no special declarations of love on February 14th, and no need for them.  We told each other how we felt every day, and we were content with the way this day unfolded, no frilly gestures and lovey-dovey professions. We knew how we felt about each other, how good we were together, how fortunate we were to find each other many years ago and be able to walk through this world together.

This year, there is a handmade card on Irv's bureau, and I drew a heart in the snow in the garden. There is a mug of tea (Earl Grey) and a plate of his favorite cookies on the old oak table in the dining room. Beau and I will walk in the woods this afternoon, and my beloved will be with us in spirit, tucked safe and warm in the pocket of my parka. We will tell him we love him as we did every day when he was here on earth, and as we still do, every single day. Wishing you deep and abiding love too.

Thursday Poem - Don't wait for something beautiful to find you.

Go out into the weather-beaten world
where straw men lean on frozen fields
and find the cardinal's scarlet flash of wing,
a winter heart, a feathered hope.

Without a camera or a memory,
we travel these old country roads,
turn corners like the pages of a book,
enchanted by the ordinary life

of fields and rocks and woods,
of small wild creatures stirring in the brush.
We take home pockets full of myths
and wonders seldom seen.

We will not give up easily,
Across the breakfast table
in our precarious nest,
we make those promises keep on going

that no one ever keeps. And yet...
there is the cardinal again,
a finial on our old gray fence.
Red is for Valentines.

Dolores Stewart 

This morning's poem is reprinted with permission from my late friend Dolores Stewart's exquisite volume of poetry, The Nature of Things. 

Wordless Wednesday - Flowering February

The Church of Winter Trees

The park is hushed at this hour of the morning. Clouds conceal the sky from here to there, and they hold the promise of snow. The silent trees along the trail are baroque columns holding up the winter day, and perhaps the whole world. The interlaced branches over our heads are cathedral arches dusted with fresh snowfall.

Now and then, the wind dislodges snowflakes, and they fall to earth, glittering faintly in the murk and whispering softly as they come to rest among the trees.

To walk along the trail would be a fine thing, but the thought of marking the pristine snow with our footprints is troubling. There is no need to announce our presence here or publish a claim to these moments and their perfect trappings. We will simply stand here and watch as the light dances around us and everything unfolds.